CANEVA, Sara

Sara Caneva (b. 1991) is a UK-based Italian composer, conductor, and educator with a PhD in Musical Composition (University of Birmingham, 2025) and a Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). She has built an internationally recognised profile, with a catalogue of 30+ published compositions (SZ Sugar/Schott), major commissions, conference presentations, prizes, and grants spanning both artistic and scholarly contexts.

Her music explores interdisciplinary practices — integrating sensory illusion, spatialised sound, interactivity, and community-based work — across instrumental, electroacoustic, and mixed-media forms. Recent highlights include the opera Radice Posizione Distanza (2024), the string quartet with electronics Resight (2024), and the
collaborative interactive installation Eclipse (2024), all realised with support from major international institutions, including European Capitals of Culture, the European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists, BEAST, and CNArtes Bogotá.

Earlier, in 2016–17, Sara was a Y.A.P. Fellow at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, where she composed and conducted the world premiere of a new diptych, including her opera ON/OFF. Her works have since been presented by institutions such as Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, Bludenzer Tage, the Salzburg Mozarteum, Fondazione I Teatri, and
Musiikkitalo Camerata, among others, and broadcast on BBC, RAI, HR, ORF, and France Musique.

As a conductor specialising in new music, she has premiered numerous works by leading composers — including Zuraj, Balch, Saunders, and Bauckholt — collaborating with ensembles and orchestras across Europe, including BCMG, Ensemble Modern, Schallfeld Ensemble, Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, and Accademia di Santa
Cecilia Ensemble '900.

Since 2021, she has taught modules in Composition, Orchestration, and Music Theory at the University of Birmingham, and has led workshops at the University of Cambridge and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

Sara is deeply committed to community engagement, access, and inclusivity through experimental music practice. She serves as Musical Director of CoMA West Midlands, and in 2026 led the BCMG Young Composers Programme and contributed to the K'antu Ensemble Digital Lab, empowering severely disabled youth to act as co-composers using adaptive technologies and immersive audio. Her research project, Music for Moving Together: Composing with Scottish Country Dance, has been selected for the IASH 2026–27 Public Engagement Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh.